Litcrawl takes place over the weekend of November 10-12 in various venues across Wellington. And one of the sessions I’m most looking forward to is Bringing It All Back Home, part of the first phase of the crawl, 6pm at MEOW on Saturday, November 11. This session is about the greatest songwriter of the modern era, Bob Dylan, a poet and philosopher, a prophet. The expert panel discussing his worlds and works, reading his words, performing his works will feature Christchurch-based poet and historian Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Wellington musician Finn Johansson and visiting Irish writer Jan Carson; Dylan fanatics all.

I’ve been given the task of introducing them on the night, mediating the discussions, stirring the pot, aiming to help with the flow. I am a Dylan fan from way back too. His Masterpieces compilation and the first three volumes of his Bootleg Series changed my world and possibly saved my life. There were plenty of albums and biographies and books of poems and lyrics and drawings devoured after that. I once had a blog named Blog On The Tracks. There’s a (pretty obvious) clue in there that I’m a Dylan fan.

Add to that, earlier this year I sat down with Jeffrey Paparoa Holman to talk about Dylan in quite some detail for an episode of my podcast.

So join us all at Meow on Saturday November 11 at 6pm for a 45-minute session that is all about Dylan, all about the magic and mystique of this masterful writer.